ANTH145 - CITIZENSHIP AND THE POLITICS OF BELONGING

What does it mean to be a citizen or to be denied citizenship? What does it mean to belong or to experience exclusion? This course examines these like questions through readings that cross national, regional and disciplinary boundaries in order to introduce and critically examine concepts such as nation and transnationalism, indigeneity and autochthony, and migration and diaspora. All of these concepts contribute to the ways in which we understand citizenship and belonging, and citizenship and belonging in turn constitute multiple and sometimes conflicting centers and peripheries. The goal of this course is to historicize, understand, and critically examine the nation-state form and to understand its role in shaping lives as central or peripheral. We pay particular attention to the ways that race, ethnicity, and identity do and do not map onto people and places, and the interrelatedness of "political" and "cultural" bases for the conferral and denial of rights and belonging.